


Waking up on the the Wrong Side of the Universe

by kyrieane, OtherCat



Series: AndromedaGate [1]
Category: Andromeda (TV), Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-14
Updated: 2006-08-14
Packaged: 2018-09-15 13:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9237152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrieane/pseuds/kyrieane, https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtherCat/pseuds/OtherCat
Summary: When Harper experiments with a new invention, he's hurtled through time and space into another time and another place in another universe. Can he find a way back? And more importantly, does he want to?





	

Harper inspected the (extremely) modified slipfighter for the last time, nose to tail, wing to wing before popping the canopy and doing a final systems check. He was grinning so hard it hurt. The readings looked good, the slipstream drive was in tune, and the t-drive was a solid bass note in the background. The t-drive had been the result of more than a year of research and experimentation with tesseracting technology until he came up with the current prototype, a device that worked in conjuction with the slip stream drive--folding space/time and "jumping" from one stream to another. If it worked, journeys that took days by slip stream could take hours or even minutes.

If it worked.

Harper double checked his readings, made sure his over night bags were packed and stashed in the rear seat, then lowered the canopy. He signaled the slip bay doors open, activated the slip's engines, and left the Andromeda. When he was clear of the ship, he entered the slipstream, concentrating on the route between Tarn Vedra and Harmony Drift. The slip point opened into a lightning-shot gray tunnel. Without taking his eyes off of the "tunnel" Harper reached for the t-drive's key pad and with quick, practiced movements, folded space.

Of course, something went wrong.

* * *

 

He heard someone call his name.

He thought it was Trance at first, but this sounded like a kid.

He was simultaneously;

  * tumbling through holes ripped randomly in space/time
  * standing in a desert talking to a kid in red and saffron robes
  * being held by Trance who kept turning from lavender-tailed-perky to gold-horned-leatherbabe and back again.



Trance was also crying, which was just bizarre.

_"The oak stands, the reed bends."_

"From the sugar maple comes tasty syrup."

_"Death is just the beginning of the journey."_

"Dying however pretty much sucks."

_"A spark lights a flame, but the candle only burns as long as the wick."_

"And the guy that brings the light is going to get it in the teeth."

* * *

 

He came out of the tesseract on a wing and a prayer, narrowly avoiding an asteroid belt that shouldn't have been there. His first jump was supposed to have been from Tarn Vedra to Harmony Drift, but this is definitely NOT a Drift. It was a blue green Earth type world with three moons, fourth out from a yellow dwarf. Harper checks coordinates, and the data he's getting are the craziest numbers in astrogation since...well, Harper can't even wrap his mind around how insane it is, and that's saying something...

There are ruins, wide swaths of radioactive waste, and the familiar signs of a technological infrastructure that collapsed a long time ago.

* * *

 

The village is like something out of a history book, thatch-roofed houses radiating from a common square, which is actually more of a circle. Also like a history book, most of the roofs are burning. There are bodies lying on the ground, ant-sized from the height he's flying but indicating something horrible has happened here.

Inspired by some latent sense of right-action, he landed his slip fighter, intending to see if there was anyone still alive who needed help. The first withered, mummified-yet-recently dead corpse nearly made him lose his lunch.

* * *

 

When he met Pema, it was on the wrong end of a gun. Her weapon was a very nice too-well-used-and-kept-to-be-an-antique flintlock rifle. His first words are spoken flat on his back in an abandoned hut, "I'm not a looter, I swear." She didn't understand a word of what he said, which was no surprise. What was a surprise is how quickly they pick up each other's languages. Harper couldn't diagram a sentence in English, and couldn't congugate a verb in Common, but it only takes a few weeks for him to be able to make himself understood; he puts it down to Necessity being the mother of Paying Attention.

Pema's people are more sophisticated than they at first appear, and by word and action remind him so much of people he knew back on Earth he doesn't know whether to feel at home or cry. He spends his nights explaining as much as he can get across the language-and-technology gap about how his technology works, and his days working (and arguing) with their equivalent of a mechanic/electrician who had the charge and maintenance of their few bits and pieces of tech.

Flint locks and flashlights, it boggled the mind. But it definitely wasn't as mind boggling as a mostly pre-industrial grouping of human polities and cultures that traveled through stable wormholes across a _galaxy._

Pema tells him about the Wraith, and he understands why her people were so frightened of his needle-nosed slipfighter. He tells her about the Magog after a storyteller playing a drum makes him sick with fear as a full 3-D memory of being on the Andromeda while the Magog pound on the bulkheads fills his head. Pema is quietly sympathetic, and holds his hand, and he's able to get a grip.

* * *

 

He doesn't know what he's fallen into, except maybe survival mode.

The slipfighter's hidden, hopefully where the Wraith can't find it, and his only goal right now is to keep them from finding it, and hopefully, keep the Wraith from finding it, or the few surviving locals. He runs, hoping to draw the Wraith off the trail of both, though that isn't even close to a safe bet--he's pretty sure that not even Tyr could out run or out kill these things.

He didn't expect to survive, or to run into rescue in the form of people who are lightyears in tech beyond the locals ...

* * *

 

They went through the gate expecting a party, and found a funeral instead. Teyla stared at the destruction with a mixture of bone-weary resignation and stunned disbelief. These people were known to her, her family had traded with families here for more generations than she could count. Teyla could even name distant cousins, now counted among the dead.

“I hate it when the Wraith get here first.” Rodney McKay offered the only comfort he knew to offer, regret that they didn’t even have the opportunity to try to stop the slaughter.

“All right people, let’s do this right.” Major Sheppard kept his voice even, “I’ve got point, Ford, you take our six. Teyla, you and Rodney keep your eyes out for anything, and I mean anything that looks out of place.” There was a momentary shuffle, and then the team fell into their customary places.

It didn’t take long to figure out that the Wraith had been very thorough in their culling. There were only a few desiccated bodies lying on the ground, some with battle wounds, and some with the tale-tell bloody handprints in the center of their chests. The houses had been set on fire, furniture drug out and crushed, little gardens ripped out by the roots.

“Major!” Rodney’s voice came from somewhere behind one of the burning huts, Sheppard felt his heart rate jack up just a little more at his frantic tone, “You so need to see this!”

Sheppard hurried over to where Rodney's voice had come from, and skidded to a halt beside him. There was a Wraith corpse on the ground, face blown entirely away. "Now that's...impressive," John said slowly, circling the corpse. He was about to ask Teyla about what weapons the locals might have traded for, that could have done this when the comm crackled to life. At the same time, there was a crack of gunfire that made Rodney jump.

"Major, there's someone pinned down near a grain silo, or something like one about a quarter of a mile away." Ford said. "I'm going in to assist."

"We're coming," John said, and started in the direction where Ford had gone, Rodney keeping pace beside him."Genii?" John wondered aloud.

"I don't think so, Major," Rodney said. "He wasn't shot, he was blasted by something like a zat only a lot stronger."

They could hear the stuttering blasts from the P-90s up ahead, intermixed with the sounds of Wraith stunners. John's first impression of the shooter crouched behind a field stone wall was of a small, grimy man with spiky hair and goggles over his eyes. With support from Ford and the team, they were able to finish off the Wraith.

As the last of them fell, so did the man, dropping to his knees, still holding his gun and coughing. On the ground near him, was something like a quarterstaff, and a second gun. As John moved forward, ready to offer assistance, the man's head came up, and he blinked owlishly up at John. "I really hope the enemy of my enemy is my friend," the man said hoarsely, and wiped at his nose on his sleeve. "Because I'm out of ammo, unless vomit counts."

"Oh, I definitely think we're in the friend category," John said, stopping five or so feet away. The gun wasn't pointed at anyone, but the man's grip on it was white-knuckled. "I'm John Sheppard," he said. "This is Teyla Emmagan, Doctor McKay, and Lieutenant Ford."

The man looked blearily at them, and nodded. "Seamus Z. Harper," he said. "I hope that's medical doctor," the man said. "And not a PhD, because I could use a doctor right now."

They watched the man turn a sickly shade of gray then topple over, landing on the ground with a muffled thud. Teyla dropped to her knees first, pressing her fingers against his throat with a kind of suspended anticipation, and then sighed softly when she found a pulse.

“I do not believe that Dr. McKay’s medical skills will help this man.” She looked up when Ford and McKay snorted at the same time.

“Can he wait until we can get a medic team here?” Sheppard glanced down at the man, then started to do a visual sweep of their surroundings, Wraith were tricky bastards, and John wouldn’t put it past them to be waiting just out of eyesight.

“I would not suggest it Major. Lieutenant Ford and I can carry him between us to the ‘gate.” Teyla clipped her gun down, then moved into a squatting position.

Sheppard shook his head, “How about if you and McKay carry him? Ford, you got our six.” And rather than stand around and argue it with Rodney, John simply turned on his heel and headed out.

Rodney did grumble all the way to the gate, more about the Wraith and the destruction than the man slung between him and Teyla. There was something about this guy that set off all his internal sensors, admittedly Rodney didn’t have many, but he’d learned to pay attention to them out here.

The man came nearly awake as they approached the gate--he seemed entranced and terrified by the rippling event horizon of the star gate. "It's okay," Rodney said. "It's a star gate, there's a nice comfy hospital bed on the other side." His reassuring manner must have been even less effective than usual, because the man just stared blankly up at him and Teyla.

"Rommie, the slipfighter, it's hidden, you'll be able to find her," the man--Harper--said. "There's some people who need to be evacuated."

"We won't leave them behind," Teyla promised reassuringly.

The man smiled, nodded, and drifted off again. Once they'd gone through the 'gate and into the control room, John called for a the medical team to get the man into quarantine, and sent for more troops to retrieve the "slipfighter"--whatever that was--and to find the people the man had spoken of. The med team arrived quickly and effeciently packed the man up onto a gurney and moved him quickly to the infirmary.

John also decided that Rodney absolutely *had* to come with, so Rodney found himself once more heading through the gate. After several hours of sweeping the area Rodney wasn't complaining anymore, because he'd gotten an energy reading that made his palms sweat with excitement, and he would have been the first out of the puddlejumper if Teyla hadn't blocked him with an arm and very politely told him that if he ran head long into a tree or a booby trap, it would be his own fault.

The survivors came out of hiding at the sight of Teyla, and after some conversation, and some convincing showed them where the "Arrow" could be found. The survivors' account of what the "Arrow" had done to the Wraith drew an impressed whistle out of John, the slipfighter itself gave him a sort of "how much is that puppy in the window" look that made Rodney snicker. "The energy readings coming from this thing are insane," Rodney said, conversationally.

"Harper said that it would be 'booby trapped'," one of the locals said helpfully.

"Wonderful," Rodney said. "We don't have any idea of what's the trap or what's an actual ship system."

"You'll figure it out McKay," John said blithely.

It took Rodney, Radek and Ford six hours to disarm the booby traps, and every time Ford would say, "yes, I think that's it," Radek would glare and shake his head no. Sheppard brought a 'jumper through the gate, and it was only a matter of minutes before they had trussed the sleek little ship up in a cable sling and had it back to the 'gate. John parked it on the pier outside one of the smaller labs, and watched with only a small amount of jealousy as the scientists swarmed all over it.

* * *

 

Rodney stared through the little glass window on the door to the isolation room. Carson had taped the canula down on the stranger's face, and hooked him up to what looked like every machine in Atlantis. Every once in a while the guy would twitch, waving his hands feebly in the air and talk to people who weren't there. Rodney could hear him flirting with somebody named Rommie, then cursing somebody named Tyr,

Carson said the guy had a whopper of a concussion, a mild case of the flu, and no immune system whatsoever. Rodney could empathize.

Also according to Carson, it was amazing the man had managed to live as long as he had. Despite the weak immune system, he'd apparently survived dozens of life threatening illnesses--Carson had found antibodies for dozens of diseases, some of which he couldn't identify. If that wasn't unusual enough, the man had some kind of implant that infiltrated his brain and spine like a second "nervous system", and there was something on his neck that was something like an outlet or port. Sheppard had made jokes about the guy being a borg, and a obscure reference to a Cyberpunk game.

Even though the guy had spoken English (with a slight 'I pahked the cah in Havahd yahd' accent) to the team, in his delerium, he was mostly speaking a language that wasn't any Earth language, and definitely wasn't Ancient or any Ancient-related language--the linguists were waiting with bated breath to get their hands on the stranger, once he recovered from his illness--the not-Ancient was also the primary language that had been recorded on the ship's black box, and on a flat, sketch pad device that Rodney was certain was a computer, if the "screen saver" (of a huge space ship executing a neat hairpin turn and swooping off across the upper atmosphere of a planet) was any indication. The computer came with a stylus, and tapping the "screen" with it made the screen saver flicker off and a text box appear, probably asking for a password in the Not-Ancient language. Trying to guess the password resulted in a noise like a cartoon bomb exploding or someone blowing a raspberry.

Rodney had a thousand questions, and the only man who could answer them was the stranger--and Rodney hated waiting, hence the vigil. He'd come been coming here every day for the past four days, silently willing the stranger to wake up, or at least speak English in his sleep. John teased him about it, and Radek rolled his eyes and muttered to himself in Czech, but Rodney didn't care.

* * *

 

The world was a fuzzy white blur that slowly clarified into the off white walls of some kind of infirmary. There was a faint humming sound that was a combination of the the medical equipment--he thought it was medical equipment--he was strapped to, and something that might have been the ventilation system of the room he was in. He felt tired and achy, and he found that one arm was bound to the bed and that there was a needle and tube stuck into it when he tried to move it so he could rub his eyes, which felt as if they were full of ground glass. There was also a tube down his throat that felt scratchy and strange when he tried to swallow.

Harper felt sticky with dried sweat, and he definitely needed to use the bathroom right about now--but he had absolutely no energy to move. "Where" was a good question, his last clear memory aside from shooting at the (Magog) Wraith was of a man whose smile reminded him a little of Dylan's know it all smirk--only without the bad memory association therein. He also remembered a big ring filled with something that looked like water hit by sunlight on a windy day. "Who" was also a good question, but he was still stuck on "where." He was trying to run down possibilities that kept skittering away from him when he tried to focus, when he heard a commotion at the door. Two men entered, one on the heels of the other, one wearing a long white lab coat, the other one wearing a t-shirt and a blue-paneled jacket with a red maple leaf on a white background flag patch. He recognized the second one from the village, Dr. McKay.

Harper held still, and pretended he was still asleep.

"I don't know when he'll wake up, but I'll not have you in here provoking him," the man in the white lab coat was saying to McKay.

"What do you mean, provoke him?" McKay demanded, sounding outraged. "All I want to do is talk to him when he wakes up."

"After he wakes up, and is fit to talk, I'll be sure to call you," the other man said. There was something oddly familiar about the accent--that, and the fact that they spoke to each other in English was a little surprising--and confusing--to Harper. The accents for both the men were off, and they pronounced words differently, even ignoring White Lab Coats accent.

There was of course a limit to how much you could find out by pretending to be unconscious, so Harper opened his eyes, and waved his free hand. "M'awake," he said in Common, and tried to sit up. "Head, Toilet? Bedpan?"

White Lab Coat smiled. "Hello lad, I'm afraid you'll have to make due with a bedpan for the time being. Rodney, be a gentleman and get your arse out of here for a bit." White Lab Coat muscled the arguing McKay out of the room and shut the door behind him. There was a thump from the door, as if McKay had kicked it. "I'm doctor Carson Beckett," said, introducing himself. "You've already met Rodney."

Harper grinned. "Yeah. Seamus Z. Harper," he said, but didn't hold his hand out to shake. For some reason, Carson gave him an odd look, then helped him with the bed pan.

"Call when you're ready," Carson said. "I'll just close this curtain."

Harper relieved himself, though it was awkward with the tubes and monitors, then called for Doctor Beckett to take the bed pan. "Can I ask what the various widgets stuck in me are?"

"Well now, you've got a nice little saline drip right here," Doctor Beckett said, tapping Harpers arm. "And these stuck to your chest are cardiac monitors, and the funny little bob pinching your finger is an oxygen monitor. How are'ye feelin?"

"Like I've been stomped on--but alive. Where am I? The cities I saw were ruins."

Carson bit his lip. "This is Atlantis." He said it carefully, as if the word had a lot more meaning than it should have.

Harper blinked. "There's dozens of drifts and planets and cities named Atlantis--which one is this?"

It was Carson's turn to look confused. "This is--"

Then McKay burst back into the room. "City of the Ancients, submerged for thousands of years, blah blah blah. Don't tell me you've never heard of it!"

Harper tilted his head to the side, and studied McKay. "Can't say I have." Unless "Ancient" was another name for Vedran, but somehow, Harper didn't think that was the case. "What galaxy am I in? The numbers I was getting were insane."

"Rodney, he's hardly fit for company, the poor man's hardly even awake yet," Carson growled, looking ready to throw McKay out of the room again.

McKay waved Beckett off. "Right, your idea of fit and my idea of fit are two completely different ideas Carson. He's talking, he's fit." Rodney jabbed a finger in Harper's direction. "You're talking, right?"

Harper grinned, even though it made his face hurt. "I hear myself talking, I'm almost certain I'm speaking words--of course, I could be hallucinating." He paused to look around the room. "Nope, no dancing girls, I'm not hallucinating."

Carson gave a aggravated sigh. "Fine then," he said, and glowered at Rodney's smug look.

"Oh yeah, a sense of humor. We need another one of those around here," Rodney said with a snort. "This is the Pegasus Galaxy. What planet are you from?"

Harper paused, a sick feeling growing in the pit of stomach as he remembered what he never really forgot. "Earth."

McKay gave him a confused look. "No you're not."

The sick feeling transmuted to something like anger. "Yes, I am. Born there, raised there, nearly died about a million times until I was able to escape--watched it get blown to bits--old news, and didn't even get more than a mention in the newsfeeds," Harper snapped in a light, angry voice, nerves suddenly singing with the resentment and grief he'd been trying to not feel for months now.

Rodney, apparently oblivious to Harper's reaction leaned forward and tapped the skin just above the dataport. "Empirical evidence states that no, you are not. This alone states that you are beyond earth technology. And then there's the language you were babbling in."

Language you were babbling in... Harper felt a chill of cold thrilling along his nerves. They didn't recognize Common. But he'd been speaking it, and he was nearly certain that the two men had been responding in it. He was almost certain he was hearing Common, and speaking it since he'd woken up, but now it was just as plain that they--and he--were speaking English, and had been since Harper had awakened--but they hadn't understood Common when he'd been delirious and apparently raving. "Empirical evidence can suggest a lot of things, if you don't know what you're looking at. Why would I say I was from Earth if I wasn't?" Harper paused a moment, frowning thoughtfully. "And if you're from Earth, which is what I'm assuming is what you're implying, why don't you speak Common?"

McKay crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm from Earth, Canada specifically, and I speak English. With a smattering of French of course. So, what am I looking at? That...thing on your neck."

"It's a dataport," Harper said. "You use it to link to computers." He thought about the previous question. "Okay, Canadian, English, a little French, no Common, and I can't be from Earth because I do speak Common, have a dataport, and have a very clear memory of watching Earth get blown to bits." Harper paused a moment. "On the other hand, you can't be Canadian on my end because "Canada" is as gone as the United States. As in, a couple thousand years of old news."

Dr. Beckett sat down hard, looking like he'd just been hit up side the head with a brick. Rodney glanced back at Beckett with a puzzled look before speaking. "I can only think of two concievable explanations for that. You've either traveled back in time, in which case we are all doomed, or you've traveled through a quantum mirror from an alternate reality. I've seen enough to accept either explanation. Now, about your dataport? How does that work?"

"You just plug in. I usually use a 'skeleton wire.' The Chao Systems multipurpose datacord is pretty good, I don't usually even need an adaptor." Harper said. "Dataports aren't for everyone though, it takes time and a lot of practice to use what pretty much amounts to a second brain/nervous system. What's a quantum mirror? I'd like to put my vote in for 'alternate reality' myself. And if you have a quantum mirror, and we're in another galaxy, and Earth is low tech, how did you get here?"

After a hour and a half of question and answer they were able to determine that their histories--and universes--were so wildly divergent that it almost didn't matter in the quantum sense--so Harper was apparently in no danger of possibly being his own great however many hundreds of times grand father. Or being ripped apart by entropic cascade failure--which sounded like a nasty way to go. With that settled, Harper moved on to more important things. "So, guest, prisoner or lab rat?"

"Guest," Beckett said at the same time Rodney said, "lab rat." They both glared at each other.

"Fine, fine, he's not a lab rat," Rodney said, after a mutual staring contest with Beckett.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Set post season 5 Andromeda, and season 1 of Stargate Atlantis, before "The Storm"  
> I've stolen some lines from the fourth season Stargate: SG-1 episode "Absolute Power"


End file.
